Turning older: The funny walk stress relief technique

Lately I have been thinking, mentally preparing to turn 40. It’s not a very big deal, but for the first time I feel compelled to acts of physical prowess just because. Which means I am sure to hurt myself very soon.

In the course of a lifetime, people mostly learn how to deal with things that cause stress. Some people hide, others shake, some talk incessantly, like me, and some take up bad habits. Some bury it all, which means they are sure to be buying a flashy sportscar and dumping their spouse at some point if they aren’t hit by a bus first.

I had a friend once, who had her own very unique arsenal of handling stress, which I learned about when we worked at the same awful job once. We were both recent returns from Peace Corps, and the job was office peon. Office peon is really an awful job, ordering pencils, showing people how to operate their voice mail, dealing with their AmEx cards and feeding the fish of the executives when they are out on business.

It’s particularly bad coming back from PC, where often times ones responsibility was in no way commensurate to ones training and it wasn’t unusual to find oneself leading conferences, speaking in front of many people, training teachers and generally being treated like some sort of rock star celebrity. I can tell you, one rises or descends according to expectation.

So office peon was stressful. My friend, I will call her Curly, because she was. She was low-key. But after being told that it was her responsibility to track projects and hold designers accountable, as a receptionist, she was capable of getting mad.

Enter stress relief. While I did not witness my low-key friend disheveling ladies rooms with her ninja kicks (which she confessed to) I did watch her “funky walk” stress reliever.

She with curly hair, would walk like she was the “DY-NO-MITE!!” Jimmy JJ Walker guy of 70’s TV fame, or any other various sundry character, mostly when no one was looking, though I did catch her.

“You should try it, it really works, you can’t take anything seriously when you walk like that,”

I did try it. It does work. I haven’t tried it in awhile, but maybe, now that I am turning 40, I might try it again.